Wednesday, February 06, 2019

Simon Ings's "The Smoke," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Smoke by Simon Ings.

The entry begins:
No one in their right mind would make a movie of The Smoke, a story that ends more or less where it begins. TV could work, though: there's enough science-fictional fol-de-rol here to last at least six seasons.

One major point in The Smoke's favour is that it's a love story, and a fairly classic one at that: a conscientious young man trying and ultimately failing to hold onto a woman who's too bright for him.

Our protagonist, then, needs to be someone who can do awkward. Enter Domhnall Gleeson. He was Caleb in Ex Machina. For a real fish-out-of-water performance, though, you need to reach for Richard Curtis's ghastly 2013 romcom About Time. Is Gleeson playing a 21-year-old or a fourteen-year-old, or what? Add to this Gleeson's rabid, off-his-trolley General Hux in the new Star Wars movies and you have a drably wrapped little nail bomb just waiting to go off. Perfect.

His lover, Fel, is a hard one: not only do her smarts outweigh her looks, she's also funny, damn it. So...[read on]
Visit Simon Ings's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Smoke.

My Book, The Movie: The Smoke.

--Marshal Zeringue